If you walk into most construction business offices, whether their headquarters or their on-site office, you’re likely to see one common theme: the whiteboard. You know what I’m talking about, the one that you likely copied notes from in college or had in your home to try to juggle your kids’ schedules. The construction industry is behind the times when it comes to digital transformation, and most are still using whiteboards, paper calendars, and Excel spreadsheets to manage crew and schedule equipment. These methods of scheduling and organizing can help outline jobs, resources needed, and which workers will be on the job. But there are so many technologies available today that assist in planning and operations, helping to optimize productivity.
Why is everyone so confused?
If you manage scheduling via whiteboards that have swim lanes and magnets, or paper calendars with sticky notes, you’re spending a lot of unnecessary time on cumbersome tasks that, at the end of the day, are inefficient. There are significant and obvious limitations to these tools, such as:
● Reporting capabilities – Without a centralized database, it is difficult to see beyond the whiteboard into metrics such as crew and equipment utilization by region or by jobs. This limits a company’s ability to maximize resources and plan for the future.
● Access to data – As companies grow beyond just one office, the limited scalability of outdated scheduling tools handicaps a company’s growth. If only one location has access to scheduling data, processes become even more laborious and time-consuming, leaving people confused as to where to go and what to do.
● Losing information – As with any paper-based or whiteboard-based process, not having a digital backup can be disastrous. A schedule written on a whiteboard can easily be erased by accident, causing chaos and confusion.
● Humans make more errors – When scheduling is strictly done by hand, it can often lead to the duplicate scheduling of resources, scheduling resources without the right certifications or skills, or the scheduling of unavailable resources. It’s just a fact that doing something by hand opens up the opportunity for more error.
Inconsistent planning, reporting, and communication is confusing for not only personnel, but can make your business look disorganized and careless to customers, which can make them lose trust, and could lead to you losing their business. But, there are tools that can save you from some of these hard-to-think-about scenarios.
New Ways of Doing Old Things
The limitations mentioned above are no doubt headaches that most managers don’t want to deal with, but there are solutions to help alleviate some of these pains. By implementing technologies like electronic dashboards for project management, your team will have more time to focus on servicing customers. The benefits of using an electronic method of scheduling and dispatch optimize the communication and account management through multiple features not available if you’re doing it by hand. Some of those benefits include:
● Making sure the right people are on the job – Keep track of employees’ qualifications to know who meets the particular job requirements while scheduling a job. A personnel record can have multiple certifications, training records, and qualifications associated with it. It can also include effective dates and projected expiration dates. Expired qualifications can be highlighted so that a compliance manager can take the appropriate action to get personnel retrained or recertified. The ability to filter by certification or other specifications for easy scheduling is an added benefit of using an electronic dashboard.
● Harness your resources – Real-time visibility into what crew members and equipment are already scheduled for other jobs helps to avoid possible overlaps. Duplicate scheduling wastes time and resources, while simultaneously looking bad in front of the customer. Avoiding this confusion puts money back into your pocket and optimizes the schedules of all personnel.
● See it your way – Many platforms include dynamic drag-and-drop functionality, allowing users the chance to create a personalized view for each kind of project management preference. This helps personnel see what they need to see and in a way that is easy for them to understand and visualize.
● Notifications that are actually helpful – According to a study by Asurion, Americans check their phones every 12 minutes. In a time where information at your fingertips is a necessity, the ability to have automatic emails and text message notifications sent directly to an employee, or even the entire crew, letting them know when and where they are needed is one of the most welcomed benefits of a digital scheduling system.
● Build customer relationships – In the service industry, convenience and speed are kings. From the time a job order is placed, through completion of service, every step of the process must be efficient and effective. The first step in this process is the scheduling and dispatching of resources. It is important to have the right resources assigned to the right jobs in an efficient manner to provide customers with the best possible service.
Eliminating antiquated means of scheduling and moving to an automated system is sure to alleviate chaos and drive the highest level of customer satisfaction. Based on a study done by Harris Polls, an average of 55 percent of work time is spent on administrative tasks and other interruptions.
Utilizing an electronic dashboard, especially in the construction industry, would be able to cut down on the confusion and inconsistencies that come with tedious manual processes and allow the focus to be more on customer needs. Tracking qualifications of personnel, access to schedules, customizable views and notifications all lead to more efficient and effective use of time and resources.
About Travis Parigi:
Travis Parigi is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at LiquidFrameworks. Travis focuses on growing LiquidFrameworks’s software platform and evangelizing its benefits to customers. He plays an active role in the technology, architecture and overall product vision of the company. Prior to LiquidFrameworks, Travis was a founding member and served as a Senior Engagement Manager for Emerging, Inc., an e-Business professional services firm funded by Austin Ventures and Benchmark Capital with offices across the US.
Website: www.liquidframeworks.com
Email address: tparigi@liquidframeworks.com